SpaceX successfuly launches Falcon 9

[Sea Skimmer]

So, does anyone else notice the Falcon 9 obviously starting its liftoff at t minus three seconds?

I think they are defining liftoff as when the umbilical detaches and the rocket is under its own control. I've seen other rocket launches when the same thing happened, starts moving just before the zero mark.

[PeZook]

Do some damn arithmetic. NASA's launch costs tend to be pretty enormous. Let's consider the Falcon 9 Heavy, which is essentially a Falcon 9 with a couple of extra Falcon 9 first stages strapped to the sides as boosters. It hasn't been built yet, but since NASA is paying SpaceX $1.6 billion over the next several years to do space station resupply launches, let's be conservative and assume that developing the Falcon 9 takes all $1.6 billion. It has cargo capacity approximately equal to NASA's Space Shuttle or the Ares I. Like the shuttle and the Ares I, it can launch cargo or humans. The Space Shuttle costs about $1.7 billion to build, plus $450 million per mission. The Ares I has not been developed (and may not be developed, if Obama succeeds in cancelling the Constellation program), but its development costs are estimated at somewhere between $28 and $40 billion, and the launch costs would be high -- even the marginal cost of one more flight per year, $138 million, is greater than the $90 million estimated total cost per launch for a Falcon 9 Heavy.

This estimate breaks down massively because you're comparing a manned system to an unmanned one. A manned system will always have higher launch costs (massively higher, in fact) because while 90% reliability is entirely acceptable for something unmanned, it's catastrophic for a manned system.

And of course you need to have a capsule of some sort to carry people, which you conveniently forgot to include in your launch cost estimate to skew the numbers in favor of the Falcon 9.

[Hawkwings]

The Falcon 9 was designed from the ground up to be a manned system. And they do have a capsule which they are in the process of getting man-rated, the Dragon.

[Ryan Thunder]

So, does anyone else notice the Falcon 9 obviously starting its liftoff at t minus three seconds?

Might just be audio lag.

[Sky Captain]

Do some damn arithmetic. NASA's launch costs tend to be pretty enormous. Let's consider the Falcon 9 Heavy, which is essentially a Falcon 9 with a couple of extra Falcon 9 first stages strapped to the sides as boosters. It hasn't been built yet, but since NASA is paying SpaceX $1.6 billion over the next several years to do space station resupply launches, let's be conservative and assume that developing the Falcon 9 takes all $1.6 billion. It has cargo capacity approximately equal to NASA's Space Shuttle or the Ares I. Like the shuttle and the Ares I, it can launch cargo or humans. The Space Shuttle costs about $1.7 billion to build, plus $450 million per mission. The Ares I has not been developed (and may not be developed, if Obama succeeds in cancelling the Constellation program), but its development costs are estimated at somewhere between $28 and $40 billion, and the launch costs would be high -- even the marginal cost of one more flight per year, $138 million, is greater than the $90 million estimated total cost per launch for a Falcon 9 Heavy.

This estimate breaks down massively because you're comparing a manned system to an unmanned one. A manned system will always have higher launch costs (massively higher, in fact) because while 90% reliability is entirely acceptable for something unmanned, it's catastrophic for a manned system.

And of course you need to have a capsule of some sort to carry people, which you conveniently forgot to include in your launch cost estimate to skew the numbers in favor of the Falcon 9.

IIRC Soyuz has ~60 million launch price. SpaceX claim Falcon 9 will have launch cost ~50 million. Even if Falcon 9 + Dragon capsule will cost ~100 million per launch still it is comparable to Soyuz. Considering that Dragon is expected to carry 7 astronauts price per astronaut might even be less than for Soyuz.

Anyway you can't directly compare relatively simple rocket and capsule with Space Shuttle which is vastly more complex system requiring order of magnitude more personal to operate.

[PeZook]

The Falcon 9 was designed from the ground up to be a manned system. And they do have a capsule which they are in the process of getting man-rated, the Dragon.

Yes, and if they actually achieve the launch cost and reliability they boast about while working on their shoestring budget, then I'll be impressed. Much of NASA launch costs are tied up in personnel and procedures designed to ensure safety of manned spacecraft: I seriously doubt SpaceX will be able to cut the costs in half, like they sometimes claim, and still maintain high enough reliability.

IIRC Soyuz has ~60 million launch price. SpaceX claim Falcon 9 will have launch cost ~50 million. Even if Falcon 9 + Dragon capsule will cost ~100 million per launch still it is comparable to Soyuz. Considering that Dragon is expected to carry 7 astronauts price per astronaut might even be less than for Soyuz.

Anyway you can't directly compare relatively simple rocket and capsule with Space Shuttle which is vastly more complex system requiring order of magnitude more personal to operate.

The Russians offered their launch services to NASA for 65 million per launch, but that's because they're using Russian hardware and labor. The Soyuz is also a much more primitive spacecraft: an Ares I - Orion combo would give the US capability the Soyuz simply couldn't match: 4 people with several weeks of endurance, and capability to automatically orbit and perform a rendezvous in orbit around another world with no manned intervention whatsoever.

So, to sum it up: with their current development plans, SpaceX stands to build another, updated Soyuz "space taxi", while the Orion would've been an actual next generation exploratory spacecraft. Which is a decent goal, but hardly a revolution in spaceflight. And it will take at least a decade before the Falcon 9 starts to reliably fly with people aboard.

[Sky Captain]

The Russians offered their launch services to NASA for 65 million per launch, but that's because they're using Russian hardware and labor. The Soyuz is also a much more primitive spacecraft: an Ares I - Orion combo would give the US capability the Soyuz simply couldn't match: 4 people with several weeks of endurance, and capability to automatically orbit and perform a rendezvous in orbit around another world with no manned intervention whatsoever.

So, to sum it up: with their current development plans, SpaceX stands to build another, updated Soyuz "space taxi", while the Orion would've been an actual next generation exploratory spacecraft. Which is a decent goal, but hardly a revolution in spaceflight. And it will take at least a decade before the Falcon 9 starts to reliably fly with people aboard.

What I dislike about Orion is that it was expected to do everything from ferrying astronauts to ISS to missions to nearby asteroids. A reusable space only vessel for missions beyond LEO would make much more sense because it could be optimized for vacuum environment and ignore anything related with atmospheric flight. Such vessel could be launched in modules aboard existing rockets and assembled in orbit. Crew would then fly aboard Soyuz/Dragon or any other available launch service, dock, transfer to waiting deep space vessel and embark on their mission.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, though it seems stupid to cancel the advanced deep space exploration capsule because it would be more optimal to have an advanced capsule plus a space taxi.

[Sky Captain]

Yes, though it seems stupid to cancel the advanced deep space exploration capsule because it would be more optimal to have an advanced capsule plus a space taxi.

Would the Orion itself actually be capable of multi month NEO missions, I have heard it was planned to dock some sort of habitation module for additional living space and life support to Orion for long missions which brings up the question why do you even need to lug around heavy deltaV eating capsule on a NEO mission?

[PeZook]

Would the Orion itself actually be capable of multi month NEO missions, I have heard it was planned to dock some sort of habitation module for additional living space and life support to Orion for long missions which brings up the question why do you even need to lug around heavy deltaV eating capsule on a NEO mission?

90% of the Orion is what's needed to operate in space. The heat shield and parachutes are, all in all, a small part of the overall ship.

Also, it would be nice for the astronauts to be able to land without transferring to another ship in case of a malfunction, no?

[Simon_Jester]

Look at it this way. Once we had Orion, we could design a "Deep Space Orion" that wasn't designed to reenter the atmosphere and equalled or exceeded Orion's existing deep space performance. That would be a relatively minor modification, I'd think.

As it stands, we won't have anything with the deep space capability of Orion for many years, because none of the replacements proposed for it are anywhere near as capable in deep space, and nothing that recovers the deep space capability is in the development pipeline.

We've canceled the deep space explorer (that doubles as a taxi) in development in favor of a shallow space taxi in development, arguing that it would be more cost-effective to separate the deep space explorer and taxi roles. But instead of getting something that performs both roles, we only get one role.

[Skylon]

Do you really think a rocket launch of a brand new vehicle was bought and paid for a few months after Obama's space initiative was launched? SpaceX was contracted under Bush/Griffin to fill the ISS cargo transport gap until Orion started flying, and possibly past that. This test launch has been on the books for a few years now.

I agree, its pretty asinine to call this true commercial space. Going with Boeing's Delta or Lockheed's Atlas rockets for a spacecraft would be just as commercial as this.

Still, good work for SpaceX as, like it or not, this is what US near term space flight plans are riding on.

I wasn't blaming Obama with this, rather noting his naivete that this is the kind of operation he expects to superceed NASA's.

In terms of capability it went above and beyond what Ares I-X did (only suborbital, with a dummy second stage) versus this - the Falcon 9 rocket itself, with a dummy spacecraft. More testing is needed, but this is a pretty good job.

[Simon_Jester]

In terms of capability it went above and beyond what Ares I-X did (only suborbital, with a dummy second stage) versus this - the Falcon 9 rocket itself, with a dummy spacecraft. More testing is needed, but this is a pretty good job.

Yeah, but Ares I can throw more than twice as much weight into LEO as Falcon 9 can. Even the Falcon 9 "Heavy," which is going to be subject to any reliability problem the Falcon 9 faces, but tripled because it uses three Falcon 9 first stages instead of one, puts 32 tonnes to orbit, compared to Ares I's 25.4 tonnes.

Nor can even the heavy variant begin to compete with the superheavy-lift Ares V, which would have been able to loft a record-setting 160 tonnes to LEO, or over 60 tonnes to the moon. Which Obama is also cancelling...

While the Falcon series might make a lovely competitor to the Constellation rockets, they are not a replacement for those rockets. I respect what SpaceX is doing and wish them success, but they are not an adequate substitute for a real heavy lift booster, and are a long way from proving that they are an adequate substitute even for Ares I (which is at least in remotely the same league).

[Sky Captain]

Couldn't a dedicated deep space vessel be designed based on experience gained with ISS? ISS after all is a long duration spacecraft, it just lacks the engine module.
Using a limited NASA money on developing an in space propulsion and habitation modules would be more optimal than designing a new crew capsule with limited deep space capabilities. This kind of hardware would be needed anyway for Mars missions (I suppose no one seriously meant to go to Mars in Orion) and any other serious interplanetary activities. With dedicated deep space vessel without the need for a specialised lander it would be possible to visit a number of NEO's and also Phobos and Deimos, maybe even asteorid belt if powerful enough propulsion is available.

Anyway this kind of decision should be made at the beginning of Constellation not when it is in the middle of R&D phase with billions of $ already spent.

[Simon_Jester]

The point being that when you already have a deep space exploration vehicle on the drawing boards, even one that is inadequate for a trip to Mars and back... you don't cancel it in favor of a taxi without bothering to develop something new to replace the deep-space capability, simply because it's wasteful to make the deep space ship double as a taxi.

I'd rather have one capsule that does both and is therefore 10% less mass-efficient than one capsule that does one and no capsule that does the other.

[Sea Skimmer]

In terms of capability it went above and beyond what Ares I-X did (only suborbital, with a dummy second stage) versus this - the Falcon 9 rocket itself, with a dummy spacecraft. More testing is needed, but this is a pretty good job.

Except Ares I has more then twice as much LEO more payload capacity then Falcon 9. Falcon 9 heavy meanwhile is far more complicated then the Falcon 9 in which a modest 29 engines need to work perfectly and which exists only on paper. So while Falcon 9 reached orbit, that means nothing in comparison because it physically cannot do the jobs Ares I was intended for. It will also simply take a huge number of Falcon launches to ever prove the damn thing is safe enough for humans. Right now its safety record is a suicide mission and it will take dozens of launches to improve it to be anywhere near acceptable.

[Sky Captain]

The point being that when you already have a deep space exploration vehicle on the drawing boards, even one that is inadequate for a trip to Mars and back... you don't cancel it in favor of a taxi without bothering to develop something new to replace the deep-space capability, simply because it's wasteful to make the deep space ship double as a taxi.

I'd rather have one capsule that does both and is therefore 10% less mass-efficient than one capsule that does one and no capsule that does the other.

Yea if the choice is only between more capable system and less capable system then obviously it is better to choose more capable system that is expected to be operational sooner.

I'm just questioning the choice of deciding to build a capsule that is kinda jack of all trades master of none. For example for surface to ISS missions which is where the most flights will be in near future Orion is overkill - you don't need 25 ton spacecraft to ferry 6 guys to ISS. For multi month NEO missions Orion seems a bit inadequate even if life support can sustain crew so long they will be crammed in a room what basically is a large van. And what if solar flare happens? Would Orion have enough radiation protection? For any kind of crew comfort and safety additional habitation module is required anyway.
Orion is best suited for going to the Moon, but without funding for Moon lander and heavy lift booster that's not gonna happen in near future.

[PeZook]

For multi month NEO missions Orion seems a bit inadequate even if life support can sustain crew so long they will be crammed in a room what basically is a large van. And what if solar flare happens? Would Orion have enough radiation protection? For any kind of crew comfort and safety additional habitation module is required anyway.
Orion is best suited for going to the Moon, but without funding for Moon lander and heavy lift booster that's not gonna happen in near future.

You do know the Soyuz uses an extra habitation module by default, right? It's a typical arrangement, and my point still stands: you want astronauts to have the ability to abandon ship and re-enter the atmosphere when something goes tits-up, without having to transfer them to another capsule. If Apollo 13 mission plan required them to enter Earth orbit first before they could re-enter, we'd be looking at three more dead astronauts today.

Anyway, Orion was never intended as a "deep space explorer". It was supposed to support a permanent manned lunar presence, so what we'd have been seeing fifty years after Constellation would have been Orion Block 12 capsules attached as command modules to all sorts of spacecraft made for different roles, also doubling as escape/landing capsules in case of emergency.

[Skylon]

In terms of capability it went above and beyond what Ares I-X did (only suborbital, with a dummy second stage) versus this - the Falcon 9 rocket itself, with a dummy spacecraft. More testing is needed, but this is a pretty good job.

Except Ares I has more then twice as much LEO more payload capacity then Falcon 9. Falcon 9 heavy meanwhile is far more complicated then the Falcon 9 in which a modest 29 engines need to work perfectly and which exists only on paper. So while Falcon 9 reached orbit, that means nothing in comparison because it physically cannot do the jobs Ares I was intended for. It will also simply take a huge number of Falcon launches to ever prove the damn thing is safe enough for humans. Right now its safety record is a suicide mission and it will take dozens of launches to improve it to be anywhere near acceptable.

Ares/Orion are spacecraft I'd like to see, however for ISS they seem like overkill. To be blunt, the track the Constellation Program was headed in, did not feel like it was leading towards deep space any time soon. Orion kept becoming less, and less capable and the schedule kept sliding downstream. Falcon 9, on paper thus far, may be "good enough" for ISS resupply (though frankly shuttle is the best candidate for that job, as ISS was built around the theory shuttle would resupply it for its lifetime). If it proves itself well enough, maybe even manned access.

Don't get me wrong. I really think canceling Constellation was a bad call. The program had serious problems, but not even the Augustine Commission proposed outright cancellation. However, I also think the sooner private companies like SpaceX can take the reigns of handling LEO operations, the sooner NASA can focus most of its attention on manned exploration beyond LEO.

[Simon_Jester]

But canceling everything NASA has or has access to that can possibly go beyond LEO (including the only heavy lift booster seriously proposed in the last ten years) totally defeats that purpose. You can't have NASA "concentrate on" deep space exploration if you don't give them money to do deep space exploration, and if you scrap the plans for everything in the world that could do deep space exploration.

That's just an excuse to give up deep space exploration.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not to mention the ISS has a limited lifepspan, only planned at 2020 right now. Even if everything went perfect, its damn unlikely SpaceX will be launching any manned spacecraft before 2015. So abandon everything... so we have a cheap American taxi to the ISS for five years? Its totally retarded. NASA is simply being gutted by this, and will loose most of its internal talent because they don't have the money to do anything with it. Who would even want to work for NASA, when all it gets to do is supervise private companies acting as trash haulers?

[eion]

Not to mention the ISS has a limited lifepspan, only planned at 2020 right now. Even if everything went perfect, its damn unlikely SpaceX will be launching any manned spacecraft before 2015. So abandon everything... so we have a cheap American taxi to the ISS for five years? Its totally retarded. NASA is simply being gutted by this, and will loose most of its internal talent because they don't have the money to do anything with it. Who would even want to work for NASA, when all it gets to do is supervise private companies acting as trash haulers?

What's the nature of that lifespan limit? They just brought up new batteries, and the Progress vehicles can bring up more propellant for orbital maintenance, and if the VASMIR test goes well propellant could become a non-issue. I'd really hate to think that after all this fucking work they're just going to pull funding and let the thing crash like Skylab.

[Sky Captain]

But canceling everything NASA has or has access to that can possibly go beyond LEO (including the only heavy lift booster seriously proposed in the last ten years) totally defeats that purpose. You can't have NASA "concentrate on" deep space exploration if you don't give them money to do deep space exploration, and if you scrap the plans for everything in the world that could do deep space exploration.

That's just an excuse to give up deep space exploration.

That's pretty much true. Canceling everything certainly is a bad thing. I'd liked to see Constellation reorganized towards exploring NEO's and going to Phobos and Deimos. Missions to low gravity objects might even be cheaper than going to the Moon because you don't need specialized lander and would also produce valuable scientific data. Also such missions would be perfect testbed for long duration life support systems, multi megawatt power plants, electric rocket engines and other hardware that would be essential for any serious long term space exploration.

[Skylon]

But canceling everything NASA has or has access to that can possibly go beyond LEO (including the only heavy lift booster seriously proposed in the last ten years) totally defeats that purpose. You can't have NASA "concentrate on" deep space exploration if you don't give them money to do deep space exploration, and if you scrap the plans for everything in the world that could do deep space exploration.

That's just an excuse to give up deep space exploration.

Did you read what I stated? I wrote "Canceling Constellation was a bad call". Nobody with half a shred of sense proposed that, except the "fly the Shuttle forever!" crowd (yeah, its still around). What ideally would have come out of this, is SpaceX and commercial vehicles focusing on ISS resupply (at minimum), while NASA focused on building a heavy lift and an Orion spacecraft for beyond LEO manned missions.

As far as the budget, Obama is actually proposing an increase: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... e%20Wealth

The big problem is there is no unified plan as to how NASA is to direct its energies towards going beyond LEO.

Not to mention the ISS has a limited lifepspan, only planned at 2020 right now. Even if everything went perfect, its damn unlikely SpaceX will be launching any manned spacecraft before 2015. So abandon everything... so we have a cheap American taxi to the ISS for five years? Its totally retarded. NASA is simply being gutted by this, and will loose most of its internal talent because they don't have the money to do anything with it. Who would even want to work for NASA, when all it gets to do is supervise private companies acting as trash haulers?

Well, research looks like it'll still be going on. Plus there is ISS to still run. Not to mention robotic probes.

What's the nature of that lifespan limit? They just brought up new batteries, and the Progress vehicles can bring up more propellant for orbital maintenance, and if the VASMIR test goes well propellant could become a non-issue. I'd really hate to think that after all this fucking work they're just going to pull funding and let the thing crash like Skylab.

If anything US support of ISS has extended. As far as the nature of the lifespan limit, its probably based on parts that have already broken down/needed replacement and experience with Mir. Without the shuttle, ISS's lifetime is far more finite. For example, Shuttle has replaced gyroscopes, and is the only vehicle that can haul them up. Some of the last flights are bringing up spare parts only the shuttle could bring, and strapping them onto the station for use when things start to break down.

[Sea Skimmer]

What's the nature of that lifespan limit? They just brought up new batteries, and the Progress vehicles can bring up more propellant for orbital maintenance, and if the VASMIR test goes well propellant could become a non-issue. I'd really hate to think that after all this fucking work they're just going to pull funding and let the thing crash like Skylab.

Budget basically. The longer we keep it going the more and more small stuff has to be replaced. The actual physical limit for station life is supposedly 2028 at which point certain major pieces like the hull of some of the modules would no longer be safe. Personally I say pull the plug as soon as we fucking can and the hell with wasting billions of dollars just to design rockets to supply the fucking thing. The ISS has been nothing short of a disaster for manned spaceflight in the way it has simply sucked up all possible money while producing very very little. Over 1,000 unmanned probes and experiments could have been orbited for the price we've paid for it so far, or else we could have had a complete shuttle replacement and still had money for lots of experiments. The moment they started radically scaling back the size and crew capacity of the ISS the whole project should have died. Now not only has it killed any hope of a shuttle replacement, it's even killing off the ability of NASA to do anything at all now that even the 'supply' mission is being outsourced to a spacecraft which can't do anything else.

In terms of the decline of the cost benefit ratio, the ISS is basically equivalent to building the space shuttle even if it could only put 500lb in orbit for 2 billion dollars a launch. And no I didn't do the math on that, but its absurdly shitty all the same. A space station that was small from the start and orbited in just a couple missions purely by the US would have been absurdly better.